Just made these for my son's Arizona State Fair project. This was my first time deep frying and it wasn't as difficult as I'd thought.
I only had 12 oz of organic high-heat safflower oil so I used organic coconut oil (so much healthier) for the balance. The sopapillas were so light and such a pretty gold! (Didn't taste the coconut at all.)
I spent about 30 minutes trying to get the temperature close to 375. I bought a candy thermometer and this was the first time I used it. It only goes up to 400 degrees, but at one point, the oil was far hotter than that!
Once I was able to control and moderate the heat, the frying was a breeze. I had a nice rhythm going with the new dough going in and the golden, crispy dough going out.
I didn't flour the board enough so when I spatulaed the dough off the board, it accordioned and I had to flour my fingers and stretch it back out. I quickly learned a few things (as long as you're not as concerned with looks or pockets):
It definitely doesn't have to be a perfect square--or a square at all.
There is a lot of leeway (though you can't really walk away from the oil) between light golden and dark golden--they all tasted good.
If you can successfully lay the square on top of the oil, you get a nice bubble. Pockets seem hard to come by, but again, this was my first time out.
You can make these as 2" shapes and get many more out of them. I started off big then experimented with small and ended up with about 80!
An easy recipe!

I halved this recipe for a small brunch. I could only find "tofutti" blintzes, but they still came out great. I rolled them in the melted butter before pouring on the batter. I used a little extra orange juice and much less sugar. It's really sweet as it is. I used lowfat sour cream. I grew up with blintz souffles on special brunch occasions. We always served them with thawed frozen strawberries and lowfat sour cream. This time I forgot to serve the sour cream, but the strawberries really hit the spot.

Everyone said this didn't taste like a Passover dessert (meaning it wasn't sawdust). It was truly delicious. The cooking time was right on. The parchment at the bottom of the tube pan worked perfectly. I can't believe I didn't think of this before! I added a little orange extract to the orange juice. After the cake cooled, I cut it in half, pulled off the top half, carefully scooped out a moat into the bottom half, and filled it with lemon curd (easy to make, easier to buy). Then I fairly neatly replaced the scooped out mounds. Next I frosted the inside with a "7-minute icing," replaced the top half, iced all over, and coated it in sweeetened shredded coconut. I put toothpicks in it and covered it with plastic wrap (the toothpicks to prevent the wrap from messing up the frosting). I refrigerated the cake until the next day and pulled it out about an hour before dessert time. Easy to cut and serve. Looks marvelous in its coconut glory!